Meaningful Metrics: A Consultant’s Perspective
Organizations devote resources to establishing a measurement system but often fail to define what it is they want to learn. Judith Hale of Hale Associates advised that for resources to be well spent, organizations must know what they are going to measure and how they are going to use those measures. In her keynote presentation at APQC’s 2004 performance excellence conference, Hale described a model … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Cedric Loggins | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subject: Management
A Learning-and-Growth Metric for Strategy-focused Organizations, Part I
Based on the consulting experience that the conventional enablers of learning and growth in the balanced scorecard framework (BSC) are insufficient for “driving down” strategy, we introduce into BSC an additional tier of “meta-enablers” for learning and growth. Meta-enablers are mental-growth competencies that ground and enable the conventional enablers, such as employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention (staff competency, use of strategic technology, climate for action). … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Otto Laske | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Learning to Ask IT the Right Questions
Centuries ago, Socrates put forth what is known today as the ”Socratic Method”, and it’s useful in the IT context. Essentially, Socrates asked his pupils questions designed to help them arrive at the answers. Thus, he didn’t necessarily need to know the answer to everything, but he did need to know the questions to ask and the underlying logic that created them.
This method is very … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: George Spafford | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management
Non-Requisite Organization: The Fallout from Using the “Balanced” Scorecard
A brief outline of why the “balanced” scorecard is not truly balanced in terms of human capital, and the pernicious consequences of the absence of capability assessments that include developmental potential in companies.
Content: Article | Author: Otto Laske | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
The Secret Ingredient to Enterprise Decision Making
Why “Operations Research” is the hidden key to making informed decisions with less risk and better outcomes.
Content: Article | Author: Mary Crissey | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subject: Operations
Five Distinct Views of Scorecards – and Their Implications
Although an organization can have only one overarching strategy, there are five distinct views that stakeholders might have when reviewing a strategy and its associated performance:
* Valuation,
* Navigation,
* Compensation,
* Benchmarking, and
* Evaluation.
Understanding all of these views – their implications and how to implement them – will greatly simplify the development and use of your scorecard … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Brett Knowles | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Management, Strategy
The New Thinking on KPIs: Why You May Be Working with the Wrong Measures
Many companies are working with the wrong measures, many of which are incorrectly termed “key performance indicators” (KPIs). Companies with 20 or more KPIs lack both focus and alignment, and are underachieving. From my research, very few organisations really monitor their true KPIs. The reason is very few organisations, business leaders, writers, accountants, and consultants have explored what a KPI actually is. This article is … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: David Parmenter | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Management, Operations
High-Performing IT Organizations: What You Need to Change to Become One
In this article, we will discuss two areas of research that we believe are foundational for answering the question of what IT organizations typically need to change and what they need to change it to. We will present a working definition of what characterizes a high-performing IT organization, and then discuss the key differences in the belief systems between them and more typical IT organizations … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Gene Kim, Julia Allen | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Best Practices, IT / Technology / E-Business
Incorporating the Balanced Scorecard Methodology into Project Management Processes
This paper describes a three-phased approach to the development of a comprehensive project based performance framework. It presents and discusses in some detail a project based strategy map, a set of KPI and project initiatives. It identifies the points of interface between BSC and C/SCS and discusses the project governance issues that must be addressed by the project team. A comprehensive approach to project management … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Czes Szarycz, Voytek Kawecki | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Management, Project Management
Peter Senge
When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.
Content: Quotation | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Jeffrey Pfeffer
It requires a lot of courage to buck so much conventional management wisdom and practices… Everyone wants to earn exceptional returns but to do it by doing what everyone else does.
Content: Quotation | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
What is the Right Performance Management Approach for Your Organization?
We have investigated several organizational development concepts to get a better understanding of which Performance Management approach delivers the best return for different kinds of organizations. One of the most promising models has been developed by Dr. Clare Graves, which is explored in this article.
Content: Article | Author: Stefan Gössler | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Using Benchmarking Metrics to Uncover Best Practices
For companies, embracing change means seeking out and adopting best practices. Benchmarking–the research and analysis of quantitative, empirical data–is a way to isolate weaknesses and strengths and to make connections between best practices and performances. Once these connections have been made, determining which practices are appropriate for an organization to adopt becomes a competitive imperative.
Metrics expert Chris Gardner recently discussed the dynamics of benchmarking for … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Chris Gardner, Emma Skogstad | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Best Practices, Management
Activity-Based Costing in the Info Age, Part I
Despite the fact that it is over 75 years old, most companies still use standard cost systems both to value inventory for financial statement purposes and for many other management purposes as well. While it has some advantages for financial statement purposes (simplicity, consistency, well understood by auditors), it is, at best, meaningless and, at worst, misleading as a tool to assist in making effective … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: James D. Tarr | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Accounting, Finance
Board Briefing on IT Governance, 2nd Edition
This report is a very comprehensive look at the various issues involved with IT corporate governance. It provides frameworks, toolkits, analysis and more. In the course of analyzing governance much in the way of strategy and management is considered. The report is a bit long (66 pages) but well worth the read. I highly recommend it.
Content: Article | Sources: BetterManagement.com, IT Governance Institute | Subjects: Corporate Governance, IT / Technology / E-Business
The 5 Simple Steps to Building an Award-Winning Balanced Scorecard
We have discovered that a trick to creating a great scorecard is to “rough it in” first, just like building a house. Use the team to create the framework for a great scorecard, like the framing of a house, and then quickly release it to the organization with the request for them to provide the details around the roughed-in scorecard.
In the house metaphor, the scorecard … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Brett Knowles | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Management, Strategy
Stages of Maturity of Cost Accounting Methods
The Visible Ops Handbook: Starting ITIL in 4 Practical Steps
This document starts off without a good introduction and seems a bit weak, but if you read on you will find a very good analysis of the importance of change management in IT along with prescriptions for setting up an effective Change Advisory Board (CAB). Whether you are in IT directly or not it would be a good idea to ask if your IT organization … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Gene Kim, George Spafford, Kevin Behr | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management
Designing a Strategy Implementation Monitoring System
This paper proposes that a Strategy Implementation Monitoring System (SIMS) based on shareholder value, the Balanced Scorecard and ABC/ABM concepts can equip organisations with a complete insight into organisational performance. Such a system could be used as a communication channel between not only strategy formulators and strategy implementers, but also as a communication channel between the executive team and the investors.
Content: Article | Author: Czes Szarycz | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subject: Strategy
Strategy, Redefined
This article introduces a new approach to strategy that is built around the customer. By focusing on what the customer is trying to accomplish, and treating all offerings as solutions to their inherent issues, the new theory advises on positioning relative to the customer, as opposed to positioning relative to the competition. While competition remains a very important factor in strategy, rather than defeating the … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Cristian Mitreanu | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subject: Strategy